A well deserved vacation

I am about to embark on my first vacation since moving here 17 months ago. :-) I am heading down to Mineral Point to see the Big Top Chautauqua peeps perform their "Moon Songs and Moon Shadows" show for the grand reopening of the newly restored MP Opera House. I'll be hanging out there for several days and visiting some friends. I am so excited! I haven't been any farther than Iron River (28 miles away) since moving to Ashland, so it's going to be nice getting the heck outta here for awhile.

I'll see ya when I see ya.

Disgusting neighbors update

Slap a 4-inch-thick layer of white and dark green cat fur on top of this
and you have some idea of what I am on about.

I got home from work halfway early tonight for a change and as I was pulling into the alley, I saw that the car belonging to my upstairs neighbors was also arriving home at the same time. I hit the button on my automatic garage door opener and pulled in. When I got out of my car, I saw that it was the younger member of the Hogwalla Tribe, Stompy Jr. He said he wanted to tell me he had fixed their toilet. (That's another story entirely and one I don't feel like getting into at the moment.) He said it proudly and with a big smile as though it were good news. I was not at all pleased as this meant the landlord had not followed through as he said he would.

And I instantly knew it had been done to avoid a visit from said landlord, who would undoubtedly discover they are harboring an illegal feline, in violation of their lease. I then brought up the offending takeout box, which is still out there in the garage, by the way. It has merely been moved from the top of their P.O.S. car to the seat of the nearby broken down recliner pushed up against the wall. Baby Huey explained that the leftovers were his "mom's idea" and that now they knew what had stunk so bad in the car. Har-har.
With as much tact as I could muster in the circumstances, I asked him why it was now residing on the chair. He muttered something about how, yeah, they should really throw it away and acted like it was just hilarious. I told him how I had looked inside the box thinking his mother had simply forgotten her food from a restaurant at which they must have just dined and was horrified to see its contents. I also explained that I simply did not understand why it had not been thrown away by now. He had no intelligible reply.

I then told him that as it involved an electrical hazard, the situation with the toilet was unacceptable and intimated I would be contacting the landlord. He just stood there with a stunned look and again had nothing to say. I hit the button on the wall, closing my garage door, and thanked him for that informative update.

Open letter to the neighbor Gods

My upstairs neighbors just love to grill out!

Dear Powers of the Universe Who Keep Sticking Me
With Shitty and Uncool Neighbors,

Knock it off already, will ya?!! LOL
I could write a novel about the neighbors I had the joy of living next door to for 8 years in Mineral Point. The ones who rode their souped-up golf carts through the yard, around and around the house, belching noxious black smoke out of their exhaust pipe; the one who was weird but OK for a few years until he lost his marbles and kept accusing me of lying and doing things I was not even doing; the creepy one who snored so loud it sounded like a jet engine and I could hear it through the wall, across the landing and all the way in my bedroom; and the ones who hooked their Halloween decorations up to my electricity with a super-long extension cord. :-(

When I moved here I had such high hopes. I thought, wow, maybe I'll finally get some cool neighbors who I actually want to hang out with. But oh nooooooo! Instead I get the northwoods version of some messed up hillbilly hawgs. They don't seem to know how to close a door properly, they romp and stomp up there and drop what sounds like bowling balls right over my bed when I am trying to sleep. Their decrepit washing machine in the basement is so noisy when they are running it (which seems to be almost every day) that it makes the press at work seem soothing by comparison.

But it's the garage that is really starting to piss me off. It's a two-car garage and we share it. Their side looks like a candidate for redneck garage of the week. Junk, old tires, ruined furniture, bags of cans and crap everywhere. The son, Stompy Jr., decided he could fix their shitty vehicles in there and he's got oil and Lord knows what else slopped all over the floor on their side. It stank out there for months until it got cold enough to kill the smell .... somewhat. I call it the hog wallow!

For awhile they were trying to put some of their shit on my side of the garage because, of course, there's plenty of room on my side because I'm not a pig. Or at least, not as much of a pig as they are! I would just move the offending item back over to their side each time. Finally, I threw this one dining room chair that they seemed to want me to have right out in the middle of their side so when they went to pull the car in they would have to get out to move it. They got the message. I was tempted to draw a white chalk line down the middle of the floor, kinda like the Munsters when Herman and Grandpa were fighting and they divided up the house into two halves.
So I just got home a few minutes ago and was bringing groceries in from the car. I noticed a take-out container sitting on top of their vehicle, right where it had been when I left for work 10 hours ago. I foolishly peeked inside and recoiled in horror when I spied what looked like a slice of pizza covered with cat fur. WTF?!! Why in the hell would they just leave it there? Tomorrow is garbage day, for crying out loud! I shudder to think what their apartment must look like. I swear to Christ, if I see one cockroach, I am going postal on their sorry slobbo asses!!

Coldplay cures my hot flashes

Oh brother, I can't, I can't get through
I've been trying hard to reach you, cause I don't know what to do
Oh brother, I can't believe it's true
I'm so scared about the future and I wanna talk to you
Oh, I wanna talk to you
You can take a picture of something you see
In the future, where will I be?

Are you lost or incomplete?
Do you feel like a puzzle, you can't find your missing piece? Tell me how do you feel?
Well, I feel like they're talking in a language I don't speak
And they're talking it to me

You tell anyone who'll listen, but you feel ignored
Nothing's really making any sense at all...


LET'S TALK!

Erin go drink! LOL

After yet another incredibly stressful evening down at the ol' ink mines, I am decompressing with plenty o' rum and, in my own small way, celebrating Saint Patrick's Day. A couple pints of Guinness Pub Draught would have been nice, but I am really just glad to be home in me jammies. ;-)

FYI: Two of my co-workers have observed in the past (and again tonight) that I seem to be jinxed because anything that can go wrong -- be it an ad, a software issue or even the damned editorial cartoon causing an error in Adobe, like what happened tonight -- will go wrong when I am there. It's been over a week now since I have not been behind the proverbial 8 ball practically from the moment I walked in the door at work.

Today the power went out all over town for about 25 minutes, which was not a good way to start my day. I had been there for about half an hour and was right in the middle of placing the ads on my pages. Someone who dummies the paper had to leave early and there were ads missing and other frustrating BS to deal with. There are some nights when I am truly amazed that the paper ever gets out at all!

Honestly, I am very thankful that I have any job right now, let alone a full-time gig with health insurance. And I do try to keep that fact in mind when things are going awry at work. I love Ashland and the Chequamegon Bay area. The natural beauty, I must admit, tops even Starved Rock and the three other state parks near my hometown in Illinois.

I do have a new strategy for coping with the madness that is my job: His name is MrCheddar. LOL He is a cat I met on Facebook and his profile photo showing a red tabby dressed in a flag sweater never fails to make me chortle with laughter. So taking a tip from Howard Moon, a silly character from one of my recent fave Britcoms, The Mighty Boosh, I have the aforementioned photo as my desktop wallpaper at work and on my nearby cork bulletin board. LOL The really funny thing is that it does seem to help.

At this point, I am willing to try anything so long as I don't again threaten to kill a certain procrastinating co-worker if he doesn't have his Business Monday story done when I walk in the door on Sunday afternoon. True story and not one of my finer moments. Sigh. I must say I was under extreme duress at the time, but there were definitely better ways I could have handled the situation. LOL

Happy Saint Paddy's Day to one and all!!


PS. I know I've used the accompanying image before, but it was just too perfect for the occasion. ;-)

Erin go bragh!

Faith and begorrah, 'tis that time o' year once again when all good Irish folk celebrate the blessed birth of Saint Padraig! So hoist high your flagon of Guinness draught stout and toast the fair Emerald Isle!!